Dignity Defined
Webster (1828) defines dignity as true honor, nobleness, and elevation of mind with an abhorrence of mean and sinful actions. It is based on a moral rectitude, that when lived in light and truth, provides dignity to the soul. It is within these terms the tenets of the Center for Peace tenets are formed.
Conduit for Human Connection
Language is the conduit for human connection. It is what sets the human being above other animal species by way of higher order processing. In like manner, it is also the vehicle of destruction of the human soul. Words have power to educate. Words are the means for how we understand one another and the cultures, beliefs, and rules by which societies function.
Without language rectitude, which is etymologically understood as right and straight, we allow the very vehicle that connects us to one another to weaken and devolve, and by so doing, so will those within those socialites.
When language is weakened through the change of social scripting, we lose the potency of communication. Permission-giving beliefs form from human to human as generations fall prey to hubristic verbal pestilence of the spoken word.
This language devolution informs our interactions with each other, within public discourse and within the halls of academia, science, and all areas where right and straightened rectitude should be the hallmark of social maturation.
Promotion of Human Dignity
Within the spoken and written language, we find the definitions of and processes for the promotion of human dignity. We speak of dignity as a process of collective autonomy (Reynolds, 2017), that when applied in its truest form, is a law and ruling of the self. It is a self-government applied at a person level impacting the system and those within. Pulling on the threads of Reynold’s cognitive fabric on dignity as being tied to ethics, it also follows that it is tied to the character of every human being. Ethics, values, and morals inform human character.
The beliefs and attitudes that are visible in behavior are the drivers of the application of character within the human. It requires the ecology of the one to the whole. Thus, the realization of dignity is in the social affording and its counter in the social affront. When we do not afford human dignity to one another in our social interactions, humiliation and mortification are the result.
Abuse Language Used to Hide Abuse and Destroy Dignity
A view into violence and abuse elucidates this construct best. Language is used to conceal abuse (Coates & Wade, 2007). As Aristotle wisely suggested, rhetoric is the use of all forms of persuasion (n.d.). There is no greater place where rhetorical influence happens than in the parsing out of language that removes the possibility of another point of view, or another human being for which to ensure an affording of correct dignity.
In acts of violence this is particularly true when perpetrators use the language of the so-called recovery communities and pop-psychology texts to cover and hide their abusive acts while egregiously implicating an innocent victim of their heinous acts.
Center for Peace – A center for Dignity Restoration
At Center for Peace we are dedicated to the restoration of dignity to those injured by the abusive language and actions of their intimate partner. We are dedicated to the instruction of corrective paradigms that will enable men who have been taught and modeled abuse from a hegemonic social script that women should be treated with disrespect and contempt. We are dedicated to the protection of these victims, encouraging them to seek truth, own their own agentic authority and find ways to live in peace.
If you are interested in learning how to navigate the narratives of abuse, join our group community or set up a discovery session for our year-long abuse program.